The Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal tiger responsible for an astonishing 436 deaths in Nepal and the Kumaon division of India, during the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century.
Operating with “almost supernatural efficacy”, the tiger was “the most prolific serial killer of human life the world had ever seen”, writes Dane Huckelbridge in “No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History”.
The Champawat tiger began her attacks in the village of Rupal in western Nepal. Most of her victims were young women and children, who often went into the forest to collect firewood, feed livestock and gather resources for craft work. The tiger was averaging about one victim per week for several years, and the number of fatalities became so high (over 200) that the Nepalese authorities decided to do something about it.
In 1903 the community organised itself to drive out the offender. After stringing goats along the valley as bait, an army of men pushed forward to flush out the killer. A thousand beaters shouted and clattered machetes followed by hunters riding elephants and another company of Nepalese soldiers in the rear. It would have been quite a sight.
Despite failing to capture or kill the tiger, they did manage to force her to abandon her territory and drive her across the border into India, where she continued her man-eating ways claiming a further 236 victims. [India: “Thanks so much for that Nepal”.]
The tiger would adjust her hunting strategy so as to best hunt and evade humans … travelling great distances between villages (as much as 32 km in a day, undertaken at night) in her new territory both to claim new victims and evade pursuers. Life across the region was paralysed, with men often refusing to leave their huts for work after hearing the tiger's roars from the forest.
Then along came Jim Corbett.
Corbett was the locally-born son (one of sixteen children) of a low-ranking functionary in the British Raj who became the most celebrated tiger hunter of his time. Between 1906 and 1941, he managed to track down and shoot nearly 50 rogue cats that had collectively dispatched some 2,000 people. Because of his track record, he enjoyed an almost godlike status in India.
The Champawat tiger’s final victim, a 16-year-old girl, was killed just hours before Corbett managed to down her in 1907. His first shots hit the tiger in the chest and shoulder, and his last shot, made with a guide's rifle to prevent her from charging him after he had run out of bullets, hit her in the foot, causing her to collapse. She was approaching and only 6 metres away from Corbett at that point..
A postmortem on the tiger showed the upper and lower canine teeth on the right side of her mouth were broken, the upper one in half, the lower one right down to the bone. This injury, a result of an old gunshot, according to Corbett, probably prevented her from hunting her natural prey, and hence, she started to hunt humans. Diminishing tiger habitat and booming human populations also increased the likelihood of the deadly encounters.
Later in life, Corbett retired his rifles, and focused his efforts on photography and the conservation of big cat populations. He played a key role in establishing a protected area in Uttarakhand, India in 1930 that was renamed Jim Corbett National Park in his honour in 1957. So, at least Jim was able to change the colour of his stripes.
Story Idea: Zac Zinn
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References
wikipedia.org/wiki/Champawat_Tiger
smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tigers-at-the-gate
futilitycloset.com/2020/01/06/podcast-episode-279-the-champawat-tiger
Book: Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon, 1944
Film: wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Eater_of_Kumaon, 1948
Images
1. Illustration of a bengal tiger dragging a human victim, 1912
2. Map of India in the 19th century
3. Jim Corbett with another tiger the "Bachelor of Powalgarh" in 1930
4. Jim Corbett (1875–1955)
5. Head of the Champawat tiger showing broken upper and lower canine teeth on the right side of her mouth
6. Film poster for Man-Eater of Kumaon, 1948 (Universal Pictures)
